In a bid to enhance its header bidding wrapper and improve yield for publishers, Index Exchange has tapped Drew Bradstock as its new SVP of product.

Bradstock spent the past five years as group product manager of Google’s Ad Exchange. The move brings Bradstock back to focusing on a fast-growing exchange, he said, that looks more like the Google Ad Exchange did when he started.

Bradstock joined Index because it operates a “principled exchange, being neutral and providing data back to publishers.”

There’s also a new twist in the exchange mix: header bidding. An area of focus for Index Exchange, header bidding “opens up transparency to all supply sources,” Bradstock said.

His task, to develop a forecasting tool that shows publishers the true value of their inventory, as well as the exchanges where it will get the best price, is recognized across the industry as tough but sorely needed.

Other exchanges have acknowledged the importance of forecasting and created solutions that solve for different publisher problems.

AppNexus now owns Yieldex, for example, which focuses on the value of direct-sold inventory. OpenX’s recently announced real-time guaranteed will enable better forecasting on private marketplace buys. And Google’s programmatic guaranteed needs forecasting to make the “guaranteed” part a go.

Bradstock said his project will be different from the competition because the tool will enable forecasting across all exchanges, not just within a single exchange.

Building analytics into Index Exchange’s wrapper will likely give it a leg up when publishers decide which wrapper to use. The current header bidding wrapper market is crowded, with not a lot of differentiation.

Once publishers have better data, the industry will further consolidate into groups of winners and losers, Bradstock said.

“I think there are a number of exchanges that won’t be around in a year because they aren’t giving the demand and performance that pubs think they are.”